Only a Speedy Alliance Can Stop the Butchers : Cambodia: Secretary Baker’s change of heart isn’t enough. Action is need to prevent a Khmer Rouge takeover.

The United States is belatedly, but inevitably, changing its goals for the settlement of the Cambodian civil war. This is the meaning of Secretary of State James A. Baker’s announcement that the United States would oppose Khmer Rouge representation in the United Nations.

In the 10 months since the Vietnamese withdrew from Cambodia, the rising danger of a Khmer Rouge military takeover had galvanized world public opinion. The Phnom Penh government of Prime Minister Hun Sen became the lesser of two evils. “Stop the Khmer Rouge” has replaced “Strangle Hun Sen.”

The Bush Administration prefers the royalist faction of Prince Sihanouk and the republican faction of Son Sann. But, embarrassingly, both of these are fighting with the Khmer Rouge and neither is of any military consequence. As a result, as Senate Democratic leader George Mitchell has observed, the Hun Sen government is the only faction in Cambodia fighting against the Khmer Rouge.

Even the archconservative Washington Times called previous U.S. policy “Uncle Sam’s Murder Inc.” Both Senate and House Intelligence committees are balking at further “covert” funding of military activities in this war.

Two-thirds of the Senate has signed a letter urging the Administration to open direct negotiations with Hun Sen. This is something that Baker wants to do but has reportedly been prevented from doing, so far, by National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft, lest it give Hun Sen a leg up in subsequent elections.

The importance of direct U.S.-Cambodian contact was inadvertently made clear at a recent Senate hearing, held after Baker’s change in course. Assistant Secretary of State Richard Solomon was asked which was worse, the past Khmer Rouge regime or that of Hun Sen. His answer that he had “never been there” is laughably at odds with everything everyone knows--that the Khmer Rouge killed 1 million to 2 million people and that the Hun Sen government stopped the mass murders.

As invariably happens when diplomatic barriers crumble, strange bedfellows will be uncovered. And the governments in Phnom Penh and Hanoi will turn out to be less than monolithic.

Hun Sen will be far more sincerely in favor of U.N.-sponsored free elections, even if they include the Khmer Rouge, than his Western opponents would imagine. But Hun Sen’s conservative opponents in Phnom Penh, who oppose elections, may find common cause with those in the West who would prefer to have the Khmer Rouge isolated (albeit fighting) than brought into the elections, legitimizing them and bringing them into the cities.

In Hanoi, Foreign Minister Nguyen Co Thach, who is committed to solving the Cambodian issue, will be allied with Baker. And the anti-Vietnam diplomats and bureaucrats in Washington and Beijing will be allied in resisting any plausible peace initiatives.

The United States is now moving from sole reliance on policies that co-opt China toward policies that dare, where necessary, to confront China. This opens a new class of options and may keep China from playing the Western nations for suckers by stalling for time in the inevitably complicated preparations for a unanimously agreed “comprehensive solution”.

Certainly, stalling is the current goal of China’s client, the Khmer Rouge. Khieu Samphan, front man for Pol Pot, has told Khmer Rouge commanders that he could “end the war right now becau1936007284rthcoming election.

Where once there was nothing except an international alliance of hawks determined to chastise Vietnam and to strangle the government in Phnom Penh, Baker must organize an international alliance of doves whose first priority is, instead, opposing a Khmer Rouge military takeover. Because time is in favor of the Khmer Rouge, this alliance is going to have to move fast. Strengthening the Hun Sen government now, with a view to free elections at some later date certain, is one approach. Speeding up the election process is another.

Because the Administration and its State Department indirectly backed the Khmer Rouge for so long, both will be blamed if Baker cannot, with his vaunted tactical political skills, turn the situation around in time. As a result, 1992 may see Pol Pot in power, or James Baker in office, but it probably won’t see both.